Moving back to Utah was relatively easy. Our stuff fit in my car, and she sat in the back with the car seat and our 2-month-old. Although it was cramped, I still hear the occasional joke about how she had to sit in the back while the computer was strapped into the passenger seat. This move was going to be good for us. It was going to get us on the right track.

We were initially moving in with her brother-in-law, who basically lived alone in a mother-in-law basement. We rented a room for cheap. He moved out soon, and we rented out the basement to what I would now call a self-entitled individual who felt burdened paying $350 a month for rent, which included all utilities. That’s unimportant to this part of the story.

Initially, I knew I had to find a job. There were many places with help wanted signs, but I wasn’t going to let go of the computer industry easily. I started training to support desktop and laptop consumer systems for a manufacturer, but there was a conflicting schedule, and it didn’t last long.

While I regret it now, not for any patriarchal notions, I stayed home, and she worked. This may have created the bond that my oldest and I have now, which she does not seem to get to enjoy. She missed a lot of firsts with him. So, by early the next year, we had an agreement. With tax returns, we went to my “home,” and at the tender age of just starting to crawl, we flew out to Missouri and spent a week visiting, introducing them to our child. When we got back, I returned to the job I had left, and she got a graveyard shift at a local treatment center.

Over the next few months, my friend from California, who had offered his home to me, came to live with us to get his feet planted firmly. I continued to learn and improve knowledge on the job front, rising in position until that job ended due to outsourcing. I didn’t care for the call center company, but the people I had worked with there were part of the reason I stayed. I worked there through moves, relationship issues, a brief period of alcoholism, and the arrival of child number two. Most importantly, I used that time and experience to stay in the computer field but move up.